Today’s REI Classroom Lesson

Scott Carson goes over a few ways to build up your database of connections. This is a crucial step in building up your real estate investing business.

REI Classroom Summary

From the simple act of handing out your business card to having a professional and active social media presence, you need to get your name out there and network with the right people.

Listen to this REI Classroom Lesson

Real Estate Investing Classroom Show Transcripts:

Mike: Welcome back to the flipnerd.com REI Classroom, where experts from across the real estate investing industry teach you quick lessons to take your business to the next level. And now, let’s meet today’s expert host.

Scott: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whenever you guys are watching this. Hi, everybody. My name is Scott Carson and I’m the Note Guy, and I’m your guest host on today’s REI Classroom. Now, my tip for the day, my little boost of the day is a really important thing. I’m going to give you guys and gals three simple ways to build a network and, of course, build your network.

Scott: We all know your network is determined by the size of your network whether you’re a realtor, mortgage broker, or a real estate investor, it’s all about your network, no matter how many deals you have, how many sources you have, how many private money lenders you have, how many asset managers are in your roller deck, it’s all important.

So let’s just start with the basics. All right, most real estate investors when they get into the business they need to build a database of people and there’s really three simple ways. The first one is probably what you’ve done before, going out to the local REI clubs. If you can’t make it to a live event, you can always jump online and checkout meetup.com, literally, thousands of thousands of real estate Meetup groups all across the country.

I talk with a lot of real estate investors that are looking to invest in multiple cities or cities outside of their backyard and one of the best ways that they are able to leverage that by making contacts, finding realtors, finding people that help them out with its wholesalers or deals is to jump on meetup.com in their area. So that’s a great way to do it.

What’s also nice about meetup.com is there’s discussion boards, and sometimes the groups will literally publicize their mailing list that you could email out to every member of their group, not a bad thing to have to build your network.

Second thing is most people don’t spend enough time building their online social medias especially LinkedIn. Now, we know people like to spend time on Facebook, Instagram, and SnapChat and all of those, but literally LinkedIn is the best one for professionals as a business. Now, if real estate is your business, treat it like a business. Now, this means guys, don’t be showing all buffed off. Ladies, don’t be showing off, “Hey, I have tan lines, yay.”

It might drive more business [inaudible 00:02:24] but probably not the type of connections you’re looking for. So what’s great about LinkedIn, as you go in there you could connect your emails that you use. It will help drive contacts to you. LinkedIn will walk you through doing that. It’s a great way to do it to build your network on there. And most people don’t realize that under the settings icons, if you click on the settings icon under Connections, it’ll allow for you to export your contacts.

So if you’ve got 300 contacts or 3000, you can click on it, [inaudible 00:02:49], and it’s going to drop down an excel spreadsheet or a CSV file with all your connections, your first name, last name, email address, their job title, and their company. Great way to build a network of emails and connections to help you move deals, find deals, wholesale, move assets, great list, easy way to build a network and increase your network that way.

The third thing is something that a lot of people struggle with. What’s amazing is a little simple two-inch by three-inch piece of paper can spell doom for you if you don’t have it. What am I talking about? I’m talking about business cards. The easiest way to build your network is when you’re going out to meet groups, you’re going out networking, you’re going out to talk to people, is to have a business card.

And if you forget your business cards at home do yourself a favor, because I travel all the time. So one of the biggest things that I’ve done is I’ve actually taken a snapshot of my business card, that’s somebody else’s card there. I take a shot, a photo of my business card. I scan it, and then it’s got all my information on it and if I’m talking to somebody, instead of me having to find another card if I’m out of it, it’s more important to, “Hey, let me put you in my phone. I’ll text you my business card so you know who I am.”

Now, there are such great things as card readers, card scanners. There are many great things out there. Evernote is a great little tool that we use to scan cards when somebody hands it to me. It uploads it to a spreadsheet then I can upload that spreadsheet to my database, to my CRM tool. You have to realize it’s okay to have a business card. Yes, this is like the oldest thing in the book. But having a business card with your picture on it helps tremendously. You want to also have your cell phone number and an email address. I see so many people screw up on that where they don’t put their freaking email address, just their cell phone number. I’m sorry, it’s the 21st Century, it’s time you binged your butt into the 21st Century.

And another thing, be simple about what you do. Don’t be a jack of all trades. Be known is one thing, the richest are in the niches, everybody. If you get a business card that has 12 different businesses and 12 different ideas and all sorts of stuff on it, I don’t take it seriously. So take in your business cards, put them in a spreadsheet, connecting on LinkedIn, export your LinkedIn connections, and then, of course, joining Meetup groups either in your area or outside your area, are the three biggest things to help you build your network.

And, now, one of the biggest things that I have as a little bonus, never follow the guy by the name of Gary Vaynerchuk. He talks about give, give, give, before you ask for anything, and I could hardly recommend that when you’re building your network. You want to be a source of information, source of something, so give information to your network, don’t just ask for the sale, just don’t ask for money. Provide some quality content to your network and trust me, if you do that consistently, you’ll be able to raise more money and close more deals than your competition.

So that’s what I’ve got for today on today’s REI Classroom everybody. Hope you enjoyed it. Check me out weclosenotes.com. Otherwise, we’ll see you all at the top. Have a great day.

Mike: HomeVestors, the We Buy Ugly Houses folks, is a franchise system of hundreds of real estate investors that have purchased over 65,000 houses. If you’d like to learn more about the most powerful real estate investing system in existence, whether you’re a pro looking to take your business to the next level, or whether you have no experience at all but a burning passion to be successful in real estate investing, please visit flipnerd.com/ugly to learn more.

Please note, the views and the opinions expressed by the individuals in this program do not necessarily reflect those of flipnerd.com or any of its partners, advertisers, or affiliates. Please consult professionals before making any investment or tax decisions, as real estate investing can be risky.

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I am owner and managing member of WeCloseNotes.com Inc, a Austin based, defaulted note buying company. I specialize in finding non performing notes on residential and commercial properties and purchasing these notes for our own portfolio.